


A Lifetime Is Not Enough

by RedCoral



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Divorce, Feels, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Making Up, Marriage, Miscommunication, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 05:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20541116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedCoral/pseuds/RedCoral
Summary: “Mike…” Harvey starts but he doesn’t let him finish.“I know you’re going to regret it and when you do, you’ll pull me in like a tide, the way you always do, and I won’t be able to resist you. But I need something to protect myself. Now, while I can still think without your influence in me. That’s my condition. Take it or leave it.”Harvey looks at him for a long while, reading him, successfully or not, Mike doesn’t know. As good as Harvey is at reading people, there are things he’s selectively oblivious to. Their marriage is a perfect example for that. “Fine. I’ll take it.”When the signatures are done, Mike takes a breath he hesitates to let out. “Okay. We’re not allowed to get married again.”Mike can’t describe the look on Harvey’s face when he agrees. “No, we’re not.”





	A Lifetime Is Not Enough

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone!
> 
> It's exams season for me, so what better way to procrastinate than writing a Marvey fic that's been stuck in my head for days? Yeah, if you want to make bad academic decisions, I'm your girl.
> 
> Anyway, it's been a while since I've written anything for this pairing, be warned. I hope you like it though!
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the show. Just this little idea that turned into almost 3.5k of words. 
> 
> Enjoy!

“I want a divorce.”

Mike doesn’t say anything. He just looks up at Harvey, face struggling to keep it blank, searching for a lie in those brown eyes that always have the power to rope him into things he should say no.

No lie.

Mike gets up, casually reaches for his coat on the rack, because if he hurries he will break and he isn’t going to give Harvey goddamn Specter-Ross such pleasure. Guess it’s only Specter now as the door shuts behind him.

He doesn’t take his keys.

* * *

He’s looking through the Caldwell briefs in his suite – or at least pretending to – in the Chilton Hotel where everything began because he always believed things came full circle whether you made them to or not. Just because he is trying to speed up the process, it has nothing to do with that empty echo inside his chest bouncing off against the walls that keep the pain locked away. He doesn’t know how long he’s been staring at the file in his hands when there’s a knock at the door and it’s definitely not room service.

His heart is trying to beat out of his chest. Fear, hope, terror… how did they mess up so bad?

He almost manages to close the door right after he opens it, but a designer high-heeled shoe stops him from doing so. “No.” He saw what Donna was holding in her hands and it is exactly like he expected but nothing like how he wants this to go.

“Mike. Let me in. Please.”

Mike doesn’t. “If he wants this to be over, then he should be the one to do it.” _He was_, Mike’s mind supplies unhelpfully and he’s glad Donna doesn’t point out the same thing.

She doesn’t comment on it at all in fact. “How are you?” she asks and he hates the sadness in her eyes, the pity, the worry.

“Who’s asking? You or Harvey?” If there’s a bit of bitterness in his tone, he can’t be blamed. His dotingly-loving husband has just sent out his assistant to do one more thing for their marriage. And in case you couldn’t catch that, yeah, that was sarcasm.

Donna’s eyes soften at that, giving way to even more pity he doesn’t need from her. “Mike, you know he’s-”

Mike stops her before she goes further along, “whatever I know or don’t is none of your business, Donna. If he had the balls to ask for a divorce, then he better have the balls to finish this because I am done chasing him around.” _Like a puppy _is left unsaid.

That night Mike knew what to do with the empty Word document on his screen. His resignation letter. The fact that it stays saved there for weeks unprinted means nothing at all.

Mike deserves the place he has reached. He isn’t going to let Harvey take that away from him, not everything.

* * *

Rachel shows up next. It’s funny how everyone comes up except for the actual person Mike has been in a constant pull and push debate in his mind that his body mainly ignored and stayed behind one of the two lines.

She comes bearing gifts that won’t break his heart at first glance until he notices the cheese in the crust and suddenly he is holding back tears and losing that battle, pathetically.

“I’m so sorry, Mike. I should have known,” he hears her say and it’s not. It can’t be.

It’s not Rachel’s fault that this pizza was Mike’s favourite even when they were dating because Harvey always got it for them despite the fact he didn’t like it. She’s already doing much more than he’d ever expect from her considering Mike left her for the man he was currently divorcing.

It does come full circle, doesn’t it? Karma’s a bitch.

When there are no tears left to shed and Rachel is still there, keeping her distance but her presence known, Mike speaks up. “Rachel?” he waits for her to look at him, “Thank you.” It’s not enough. For everything he’s done, for everything they’ve been through it can never be enough. But it’s all he can offer right now.

* * *

Mike’s with Rachel when Harvey shows up at his hotel room’s door. They’re watching The Goonies and laughing at the screen. Mike promised to show her proper film-making masterpieces and he’s owning up to it, even if it’s a few years too late.

Harvey’s expression is thunderous when he opens the door and Mike’s grin freezes on his face.

“Here,” Harvey says and shoves the papers on his chest before he turns to walk away.

“Seriously?” If Mike’s laugh sounds hollower than before, it’s only realized by Rachel’s sudden silence.

“What?” Harvey turns back, jaw clenched and hands in his pockets. If Mike knows Harvey as well as he thinks he does, they’re shaped in tight fists. But considering where they are, maybe Mike never knew Harvey in the first place.

“You’re going to play the hurt-husband card when you were the one who asked for this?”

“Ex-husband,” Harvey corrects.

Mike takes a step forward as his voice rises, “Who asked for this, Harvey?!”

“I didn’t ask for a divorce to get someone else into my bed!” The moment they left his lips, Harvey knew the words were a low blow.

Mike suddenly feels and uncontrollable surge of anger in his chest, pushing at his vocal cords. When it escapes, he expects all hell to break loose. “No, you probably did it before asking!”

The silence is deafening.

Harvey just stands there as if he couldn’t recognize the man standing before him and he says one thing, but it feels like he used physical force to break him.

“I see I made the right choice then.”

When the hallway is empty and Mike is clutching the papers like the last lifeline he’s ever going to receive, Rachel is looking at him with tears in her eyes, a hand covering her mouth in a dramatization so unlike Harvey he’s not ready to deal with it right now.

“Please, leave.”

Rachel does without saying a word.

* * *

Mike goes to Harvey next. He rides the private elevator to Harvey’s home – _their_ home – slowly seething and his mind running a mile per minute at the same time. There was only one thing Harvey’s reaction to Rachel’s presence could have meant and there was only one thing that meant for Mike.

Jealousy.

A mistake.

He didn’t know why Harvey was doing this but he knows he can never let him do it again.

If Harvey’s surprised to suddenly see him in his living room, he doesn’t show it, but when Mike’s announcement, “I have a condition,” registers with him, it enacts a response.

Harvey doesn’t say a word as the reviewed papers are tossed on his coffee table and he starts skimming through them.

It hurts how bare the condo is from their memories, as if Mike never even lived here except for one thing that cements it for him. Harvey’s an asshole.

“Mike…” Harvey starts but he doesn’t let him finish.

“I know you’re going to regret it and when you do, you’ll pull me in like a tide, the way you always do, and I won’t be able to resist you. But I need something to protect myself. Now, while I can still think without your influence in me. That’s my condition. Take it or leave it.”

After he’s done, Mike thinks, _truer words, really._

Harvey looks at him for a long while, reading him, successfully or not, Mike doesn’t know. As good as Harvey is at reading people, there are things he’s selectively oblivious to. Their marriage is a perfect example for that.

“Fine. I’ll take it.”

When the signatures are done, Mike takes a breath he hesitates to let out. “Okay. We’re not allowed to get married again.”

Mike can’t describe the look on Harvey’s face when he agrees. “No, we’re not.”

He doesn’t want to think how easy it had been for Harvey to pick up the pen and sign the dotted line. He doesn’t think how Harvey didn’t dispute what he said, didn’t deny how permanent this situation was not. He doesn’t think how he admitted Mike would take him back in in a heartbeat. He doesn’t think how Harvey didn’t exclude that option.

But most of all he doesn’t think about the photograph Harvey has started using as a bookmark now. Mike doesn’t need his eidetic memory to remember the day when Harvey asked him to move in and they fell asleep in the office exhausted from working for thirty six hours straight and Donna snapping a picture of their tangled limbs and Mike’s face buried in Harvey’s neck, Harvey holding him as if he was protecting Mike even in his sleep.

He doesn’t need to remember that at all.

* * *

It takes months for Mike’s prediction to prove true. If he knew there’d be a trigger, he can’t tell you whether he would have hidden away or arranged for this to happen way earlier.

He’s in one of those Upper East Side restaurants Harvey frequents on a date. Not because Harvey goes there, but apparently because his date does. He shouldn’t be, but he still is surprised when Harvey shows up standing next to them announcing his presence with a single word Mike wished he could forget how it sounded like.

“Mike.”

That tone should have been the warning bell. Mike’s selectively deaf and misses it.

He gives nothing away as he says, “Harvey,” ignoring how his date is looking at them back and forth either confused or terrified. Mike can’t tell.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” Harvey put on his winning smile and turns towards the man sitting opposite Mike. “I’m Harvey Specter, Mike’s partner, it’s great to meet you.” He offers a handshake but before Paul can even move, Mike has gotten up from the table, explaining “Managing partner”, and is already steering Harvey away with a simple “Paul, will you excuse us for a minute?”

Harvey’s muttering, “That’s what I meant,” but Mike doesn’t give a damn. Once they’re outside, he lets go of the other man’s arm and turns to him furious.

“What the fuck is your problem?”

Harvey’s answer has him reeling. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“You’re not _meant_ to see me anymore.” Once upon a time, they were meant to be, Mike had told him so. Harvey has shown his opinion on the matter.

“You know what I mean,” Harvey says to cover up, but truthfully, neither of them does. What can Harvey say? That he misses him? That it him how incomplete he is without him?

Mike sighs, “No I don’t. What do you want from me Harvey? What did you expect? I’m not your husband anymore.” Mike doesn’t stay for an answer. Instead he turns to walk back inside but Harvey’s whisper makes him stop.

“Yeah, but you were.”

“I didn’t ask for this. You did.”

And when his hand is not the door handle, Harvey says then accusingly, “No, you just asked for the severance package,” and he knows he doesn’t mean work or the divorce settlement because Mike didn’t accept a dime from him.

“What the fuck, Harvey?!” Mike yells at him and when Harvey huffs in response, Harvey finds himself with his back against the wall in front of the restaurant. “What the actual fuck is wrong with you?” His voice is raised, his hands buried in the lapels of Harvey’s suits jacket, his body using the force he needs to keep Harvey right where he is until he doesn’t and pushes away from him.

“Did you think that you’d divorce me, and I’d what? I’d stick around waiting for you to come back and do it all over again?!” He shakes his head, “how sick in the head are you?” he knows he’s being out of line, hurting Harvey the way he promised he never would, but you know what? Mike is hurting too. He’s been hurting for far longer than Harvey has cared to find out and he’s done protecting him from his own choices.

When a woman’s head pops out of the restaurant with a, “Harvey, our table’s ready,” and Harvey curtly responds, “Not now,” Mike laughs. Mike laughs his ass off for how stupid he’s been.

“oh, I see how it is,” he says when he comes back for air. “You’d thought you’d break up, fuck some pussy, get it out of you system and the come crawling back, right? Because puppy Mike will never say no!” he laughs without humour again. The hysteria settling in as the pieces fall into place in his mind. “You know what? Fuck you, man.” He spits at him and moves to go back inside.

Harvey grabs his arm before he does. “It was never like that. You know it never was. I haven’t – I haven’t been with anyone since you, Mike and I haven’t been with a woman since before you and I got together.”

Mike clenches his jaw trying to hold the question in, but he can’t. It’s been months and he still doesn’t know. He has to. “Then why?”

He doesn’t need to say anything more for Harvey to understand. He knows this, because Harvey’s putting distance between them and his eyes become so sad, it’s breaking him all over again.

“You weren’t happy with me. I was holding you back.”

Mike’s taken aback by that. “Of course I was happy with you! What are you talking about?” If he’s looking at Harvey like he’s grown two heads while they’re standing there, he can’t be blamed. That was the craziest statement someone had ever made to him. 

Harvey gulps, and looks away as he explains. It almost looks like it physically hurts to get the words out. “On our anniversary, I gave you the gift I told Donna to buy and you barely spoke to me for a week after.”

Mike sighs audibly and he holds back the groan he wants to let out at the situation they’ve found themselves in. Harvey’s the smartest person Mike has ever known and yet still an idiot with a dash of emotionally constipated. Apparently, more than a dash. “Okay.” He says as he thinks about his next move. He combs a hand through his hair, bites his lip, trying to think of where to go with this. He motions to Harvey then, with a placating gesture, “Harvey. I need you to repeat the sentence you just said.”

“Why?”

“Humour me, okay?”

Harvey looks at Mike closely as he repeats himself, waiting for a reaction to his words, humouring Mike just like he wanted. “On our anniversary, I gave you the gift I told Donna to – ” there’s a spark at the name. There’s a spark in his eyes, a hint of that something he had watched Mike looking at him during that whole week that he still wasn’t familiar with. “Oh. Donna.”

Mike takes a breath then, a wistful, bitter smile on his face as he speaks, “You always sent her to do things for our marriage. It reached the point where I felt I was more married to Donna than you.”

Harvey doesn’t understand. He frowns, “But I was the one who told her exactly what to get or do.”

Mike always loved how openly Harvey communicated with him through expressions. No one would ever see him frown like this, no one Harvey didn’t trust and there weren’t many of those. But now, now it reminds him how a big misunderstanding ruined their marriage, how the words he bit back are coming back to haunt him now and they’re not going to stop. This is his own doing. “Look, I know how demanding your job is, I do the same, but I always find – found – I always found time to do something for you even if that meant bringing a bagel to your office from the cart down the street you like. And if I didn’t have time, I made time. I just wished you would do the same.”

Harvey watched as Mike looked away from him, dejected, the fight having left them both in a moment neither of them expected. “How long have you felt this way?” Such a feeling doesn’t seem fresh.

When Mike doesn’t answer, Harvey knows what it means.

“Goddamn it Mike. Why didn’t you tell me?” Angry, hurt, confused… how did they mess up so bad?

“Is that why you asked for a divorce?”

“You weren’t happy.”

Mike smiles sadly then, “I was. I was happy. I was just disappointed.”

Harvey had never disappointed Mike before. Even when he had been at his lowest, even when he had pushed him away with everything he had unwilling to accept their relationship at first, Mike had never been disappointed in him . “Fuck,” he curses to himself and looks around for a way out of this. He hopes there’s a way out. “So. What now?”

“Now… nothing,” Mike shrugs. “We’re done.”

Harvey doesn’t hide the way his breath catches in his throat. He’s tired of hiding. He’s tired of those goddamn walls separating him from Mike. “You don’t mean that.” Not for the first time when it comes to Mike, he prays he doesn’t.

“What else is there to do?”

Mike is looking at him and Harvey is not ready to let that sight go. He’s not ready for Mike to not be there with him anymore, not occupying the same space as him, the same bed like he used to, the same couch. “Come home with me?”

“Home?” Mike asks curiously, hopefully, longingly.

Harvey smiles then, small but truer than it has been in a long time. “Our home. It’s just like you left it.”

Mike’s hopefulness is gone then at the last memory he has of their place, Harvey’s place at the time, “No, it’s –”

“I knew you were coming,” Harvey interrupts. “Rachel called to ream me a new one and I guess it slipped.” He hesitates, not because he doesn’t want Mike to know. Mike has been able to get out of him more honesty than anyone else has ever managed. He hesitates because sometimes that honesty hurts more than he’s willing to admit. “I didn’t want you to see the truth.”

“Which is?”

Harvey wants to get closer, but he doesn’t know if he’s allowed. He breaks the walls down, blowing up their foundations as they crumble to let Mike in. Only Mike. “I am an asshole. But I never stopped loving you. I can’t. I just wanted you to be happy, even if that meant without me.”

Mike is the one who takes that first step forward. “And now? Don’t you want me to be happy?”

Harvey closes the space between them, “Why do you think I’m asking you to come home?” He slowly put his hand on Mike’s neck, letting it wrap around the back of it, letting their temples touch and their breaths mingle.

“Okay.” Mike says and Harvey wonders if it’s now appropriate to kiss him, doesn’t know if he deserves it after all he’s put them through when he remembers something.

“Aren’t you going to tell _Paul _you’re leaving?” If the name comes out tinged with jealousy, Harvey doesn’t care.

Mike smirks at him then and it’s almost like _before_ and Harvey’s too happy to get annoyed at him. “He already left. Didn’t you see him?”

Harvey smiles, and speaks without thinking, “I don’t see anyone when you’re here with me.” 

He doesn’t expect Mike to look at him as breathless as he does, as wide-eyed, as _happy._

“You’re such an asshole.”

Yeah, they’ve already established that, Harvey thinks and he kisses him then. He doesn’t want to talk anymore. They have a lifetime of talking to do. They have a lifetime of kissing too, but when it comes to Mike, something tells Harvey lifetime will never be enough.

* * *

And when weeks later Harvey comes home with a file in his hands, Mike looks at him curiously, suspicious of the wide grin inhabiting his face right now. “I found a loophole in our divorce.”

When Mike reaches the last page of the file he laughs and looks at Harvey only to find him on one knee with the ring Mike had taken off after the shower. There’s only one thing left to say in their story and it is whispered a thousand times over and over again.

“Yes.”

There’s a page in the file with “Will you marry me?” written in huge letters with a sharpie in Harvey’s not-so-elegant handwriting. If Mike frames it on the wall in their bedroom the next day, it’s no one business and it definitely doesn’t earn him the best sex he’s ever had.

Definitely not.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Hopefully, it was good...? 
> 
> -RC


End file.
